Just Looking...

"Ile de la Cite"
10 x 17, oil on linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2014
(sold)

How many times have I entered a shop and had the salesperson ask "Can I help you find anything?". And how many times have I replied

"No thanks, I'm just looking." JUST looking. The "just" word in this context is like the "merely" word--it denigrates the thing you are doing. Makes it seem trivial and unimportant.

But of course we know that in painting, nothing is more important than looking--or perhaps I should say "SEEING". (Subject for a future post: what is the difference between looking and seeing??). A notable artist, whose name I now forget, has said "It is much harder to learn to see than it is to learn to paint".  Amen to that.

For today, a few memorable comments on seeing:

From Charles Hawthorne, author of Hawthorne on Painting:

Anything under the sun

is beautiful

if you have the vision--

It is the seeing of the thing

that makes it so.

"At the Seaside"
Charles Hawthorne, 1920

From Helen Keller:

Long ago I became convinced

that the seeing

see little.

From Maggie Siner:

Learning to see

is a lifelong pursuit.

"Unmade Bed"
21 x 22, oil on linen
(c) Maggie Siner, 2011